Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/99

 Central Provinces, and by the aboriginal tribes of the Bengal and Bombay Presidencies ; while those of Amravati shew more of the elaboration and finish of the Dravidian [“ swami ”] jewelry of the Madras Presidency.

After the archaic jewelry of Ahmedabad, the best Indian jewelry, of the purest Hindu style, is the beaten gold of Sawunt- wadi, Mysore, Vizianagram, and Vizagapatam, which well illus- trates the admirable way in which the native workers in gold and silver elaborate an extensive surface of ornament out of apparently a wholly inadequate quantity of metal, beating it almost to the thinness of tissue paper, without at all weakening its effect of solidity. By their consummate skill and thorough knowledge and appreciation of the conventional decoration of surface, they contrive to give to the least possible weight of metal, and to gems, commercially absolutely valueless, the highest possible artistic value, never, even in their excessive elaboration of detail, violating the fundamental principles of ornamental design, nor failing to please, even though it be by an effect of barbaric richness and superfluity. This character of Indian jewelry is in remarkable contrast with modern European jewelry, in which the object of the jeweller seems to be to bestow the least amount of work on the greatest amount of metal. Weight is in fact the predominant character of European “ high class ” jewelry, and gold and silversmith's work. Even in reproducing the best Adams’ designs, they spoil their work by making it too thick and heavy ; and so demoralising is the rage for weight that English purchasers, attracted by the eye to Indian jewelry, directly they find how light it is in the hand, reject it as rubbish ; the cost of Indian jewelry being from one- twentieth to one-fourth in excess of its net weight. The jury on jewelry at the Great Exhibition of 1851 actually wrote of Indian jewelry: “It is sufficient to cast a glance on the exhibitions of India, Turkey, Egypt, Tunis, to be convinced that these nations have remained stationary